1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a battery pack apparatus and a method of operating the battery pack. More particularly, the present invention relates to a battery pack apparatus and method for monitoring characteristics of the battery pack.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, chargeable/dischargeable batteries (particularly, secondary batteries) undergo conversion between chemical energy and electrical energy through electrochemical reactions in which internal active materials oxidize/reduce due to charging/discharging. Secondary batteries' performances are affected by charging method, discharge depth, service temperature, external load level, number of charging/discharging, and the like.
Batteries are classified into bare cells and battery packs. The bare cells are simply adapted to be charged/discharged without any protective circuit or control circuit mounted thereon. However, battery packs have a bare cell and various circuits mounted on the bare cell and are packaged with external sets with which they are to be used.
The circuits control charging/discharging of secondary batteries and are interrupted when the batteries are overcharged/over-discharged to extend the batteries' lives and protect users from dangerous situations.
However, conventional battery packs cannot be used/maintained in an optimum condition and the exact timing for replacing them cannot be predicted accurately. Such is the case because they have no ability to separately monitor their maximum charging/discharging voltages, maximum charging/discharging currents, bare cells' temperature, charging/discharging switches' temperature, and battery capacity. However, they are able to control charging/discharging conditions and interrupt their circuits in the case of excessive voltage or current.
In addition, conventional battery packs have no ability to separately store data, such as charging/discharging voltages, charging/discharging currents, temperature, and capacity, as mentioned above, and transmit it to external sets. This makes it difficult to grasp the exact reason for a battery pack malfunction, and to periodically diagnose them.
Furthermore, conventional battery packs have no ability to provide proper warnings based on their conditions, or avoid disorder beforehand, to help ensure stable operation of external sets. Such causes the operation of external sets to be unstable.